


diomira

by malfaisant



Category: Temeraire - Naomi Novik
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-09
Updated: 2016-01-09
Packaged: 2018-05-12 21:37:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,965
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5681740
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/malfaisant/pseuds/malfaisant
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The first time Tharkay comes to Istanbul, he is 19, and he has never crossed the desert before.</p>
            </blockquote>





	diomira

**Author's Note:**

  * For [hideflen](https://archiveofourown.org/users/hideflen/gifts).



The first time Tharkay comes to Istanbul, he is 19, and he has never crossed the desert before.

He arrives in the city by sea. In the haze of the coastline, he discerns the form of a glittering skyline, golden domes and towering spires, whitewashed walls lining the curve of the Golden Horn. The Sea of Marmara glistens in the late evening sunset like a crescent moon.

There are the usual harbor sounds as he disembarks from the ship in a half-dozen languages, and it feels almost a sort of homecoming, despite that he has never been to the city in his life. Tharkay thinks that, perhaps, as it had been by ship that he was taken from his home, that it is only fitting he should return by the same means. But it is only a false image, and he dismisses the idea as sentiment. He is still a long way from home, if it even still existed.

*

Avraam Maden welcomes Tharkay with open arms, and gives solemn condolences for his father. Maden is a banker, and Tharkay's father an old acquaintance of his; after all, money has business everywhere, and his father had been nearly as well-traveled.

“He was a fair and respectable man. A sad loss,” Maden tells him. Tharkay accepts his sympathies with a bow.

He stays in Maden’s house, taking an extra room in the wing of the large manor reserved for servants. Maden has invited him to stay until he finds his bearings and can afford his own lodgings in the city, and already it is more hospitality than he expected to find when he left Edinburgh. Maden offers even more, tells Tharkay that there is much a fellow as well-educated as he is can do, with his fine skill for languages. Already he has a decent grasp of Turkish, having solicited lessons from a fellow passenger aboard the ship.

“It is hardly a proper station for a gentleman’s son, of course,” Maden starts to say, but Tharkay cuts him off, shaking his head.

“I am not much of my father’s son in the eyes of the law, though I appreciate your assistance.”

“So you accept?”

Tharkay pauses. “I must decline for now.” He explains his search for a caravan bound east, perhaps for Tashkent or Damascus. Maden nods understandingly, giving him the names of several tradesmen with whom he can make his inquiries.

Tharkay is not ungrateful, not entirely, and he does not bristle at sympathies, freely given and without ulterior motive, but he has not yet learned how to accept pity graciously, despite that he should by now be rather practiced at it.

*

The first time they speak alone, Sara meets him in the servants’ quarters and regards him with surprise, her mouth shaped in a quiet _oh._

It is not their first meeting; her father had introduced Tharkay to Sara and her two brothers the night he arrived at their house. But Sara has not seen the boy with dark hair and dark eyes since that first dinner; she has wondered what had become of him.

Here he is now, sitting on the windowsill, a small sketchbook on his lap. As she enters the room, Tharkay stands and makes a leg, which she returns belatedly.

“Miss Maden.”

“Mister Tharkay,” she says, her English still somewhat stilted, “I was only looking for my maid. I did not expect to find you here.”

He smiles at her, not unkindly. But despite the impeccable polish of his manners, there is something wild and untameable about him, an intensity in his dark eyes that Sara cannot quite place.

“I have not seen Miryam since she left for the bazaar this morning,” he says.

“I see,” she says, and looks curiously at the journal in his hands. “May I ask what you are drawing?”

Tharkay’s mouth draws down for a second, hesitating, before he rifles through the sketchbook, and hands her a loose leaf of paper. It is a half-finished sketch of the Galata Kulesi in charcoal, standing tall and austere above the surrounding tiled roofs, the Bosphorus in the distance.

She takes it, careful not to smudge the charcoal where it has not yet settled. “It is a beautiful drawing.”

“It is a beautiful city," he says simply.

Sara pauses, and thinks briefly of the slave markets of Tavukpazari. “It has its share of ugliness,” she says.

He shrugs. “I have found that that is true of any city, unfortunately.”

“And you have been to many cities, Mister Tharkay?”

“A fair number. I have not yet been disillusioned by your city, and I wish to revel in that view for as long as I can.”

She laughs, not unkindly, and Tharkay looks at her in mild bemusement. Before he can mask his confusion, she turns her eyes up, and asks, “Will you not accompany me through the city, then? We can find Miryam together, and I will tell you as much as I know of my home.”

*

Sara walks him through the city, and Tharkay is in awe of its foreignness. Istanbul is ten cities built one on top of another like pieces of a puzzle, passing hands through the centuries, buildings in the architecture of empires both ancient and new.

But the most curious quality of the city is in its music, arabesque melodies of lutes and tanburs an intermittent background to the everyday sounds of the Ottoman capital: market-stall negotiations conducted in Turkish, Arabic, Greek, French and other languages he cannot recognise; the afternoon calls for prayer and the ringing of bells; conversations from the coffee houses, frequented by government officials and tradesmen, imams and muezzins, from the intellectual elite come to discuss literature to impoverished beggars alike, the only amusement they can afford.

Sara tells him of the janissaries and sipahis idling away their free time with games of chess and backgammon, of the poets and storytellers in the square trying to find audiences for their pieces. She translates Hebrew for him as they speak with a vendor at a stall selling tea, and hands him a bag of dried pomegranate leaves.

“I have heard you British are fond of your tea,” she says, with a smile.

From a terrace above, there is a woman’s voice, ringing with laughter at some unheard conversation over dinner, as the evening falls and the lamps are lit along the quay, one by one. It is a city of the crossroads, between the desert and the sea. No one looks twice at the colour of his skin.

*

“Where do you wish to go, from here?” Sara asks one night, as they sat in the parlour together. It is not demanding, but Tharkay looks away regardless. He is nearing the end of his stay.

“I wish to go east,” he says simply.

She looks away. There is no doubt or uncertainty in his answer, but she thinks she can detect a hint of apology in his voice. “You have never thought of staying, perhaps?”

“I do not think so,” he replies, after a pause. “I have not seen enough of the world yet.”

Sara recognises the look in his eyes now, dark and heartbreakingly young, much too young for the cold anger it held, the implacable restlessness that will travel a thousand miles, far and away, never to stay in one place for too long.

True to his word, Tharkay leaves the morning after next. On her desk, Sara finds the charcoal drawing of the Galata Kulesi on her vanity table, now finished.

*

Tharkay returns to Istanbul a year later, his clothes wind-worn and his skin a deep teak brown from the sun, a damascened knife hanging at his hip. Sara's father welcomes him back like a son, and asks after his travels. He has come from Kashgar, from Baghdad, from Samarkand. His Turkish is nearly fluent, and he has picked up a number of the Silk Road’s many languages in the manner of a collector, along the stretch of the Levant.

But wanderlust will drive a man yet farther; Sara knows he is only visiting. Over a cup of strong coffee, he tells her of his adventures thus far, and his stories bring forth in her mind vivid images of the desert—the sun beating hot down the nape of his neck; the moon rising white over the dunes; prints in the sand, tracing the footsteps of countless travelers, soon to be blown away.

“And have you found what it is you’re searching for?” she asks.

Tharkay blinks at her, and looks away with a slight flush on his face.

Despite all the mystery of his person, Sara realises that Tenzing is remarkably simple, in some ways. He is guarded and suspicious, hardened by experience in spite of his age, but he is also remarkably kind. He smiles reservedly. He keeps a souvenir from every place he visits in the form of his maps, lovingly drawn and chartered, his hands moving delicately on the parchment. He has a subtle, if cynical, sense of humour, too sarcastic by half, and a quiet penchant for the dramatic, no matter how much he denies it.

She indulges it with fondness. Sometimes, he is even dashing.

(He does not ask, not this time. Sara does not know if she ever wants him to ask, despite that they both already know how she must answer.)

*

They do not see each other again for another three years, when Tharkay arrives in the city to deliver a message to her father.

He is more worldly, now, his travels having taken him as far as Macao. He has crossed deserts and mountains and seen dragons in the wild. Avraam Maden offers him employment as his man of business, a position he now accepts as some recognition of his competence rather than a charity.

Sara has heard stories of men going into the desert and coming out years older than they had been gone, and she thinks she can believe it. Tharkay’s eyes are not as young as she remembers, but she still sees in them the same bitterness, the same familiar restlessness.

Tharkay sits on the ledge of her terrace, facing the city. Sara is on the settee, absently playing the harp.

On Tharkay's arm is a kestrel on a tether, staring at her with baleful eyes.

“She is a fierce creature,” Sara says. The kestrel gives a piercing shriek.

He means to offer the bird to her as a gift, but Sara shakes her head. “She would only languish here, kept on a line. With you, she can fly anywhere in this great wide world.”

“You can keep her as company.”

“She would make for a very sad ornament.”

Tharkay strokes the kestrel’s feathers, soft against his calloused fingers. “You could set her on your unwanted suitors. You have turned down yet another offer, I hear.”

“Oh, bother. If the threat of my father’s ire cannot dissuade them, I do not think a kestrel will be much more successful. They will keep at it so long as my father has his fortune.”

Tharkay puts a hand to his chin, and affects a thoughtful expression. “Then I shall return with dragons next time, to better fend them off.”

Sara smiles widely then, shoulders shaking with quiet laughter, her large, dark eyes, sparkling with mirth. Not for the first time, she reminds Tharkay of the city.

There is a camel downstairs with wine-skins and packs of cured meat hanging from its saddle, ready to take him away from this city by the sea. It is not home, not yet; he knows he will leave soon again.

But for now, as Sara takes up the harp again, Tharkay simply leans back against the wall, and takes shelter in this temporary oasis.

**Author's Note:**

> my pinch-hit for **hideflen** for the Temeraire 2015 Exchange, who asked for Sara and Tharkay's relationship and some of their teenage adventures in Istanbul. there's not a lot of adventures here, but I hope you like it regardless! my thanks to captainshellhead and vibraniumstark for the speedy beta.
> 
> title from Italo Calvino's _Invisible Cities _.__


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